We got trouble.

For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts. And tweet a link to this page to famous people on Twitter who are talking about KONY 2012!

I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.

KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’mnotalone.

Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them,arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. Thesebooks each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

As Chris Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”

Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple mission... the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.

Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always ...an nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.

If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.

They didn't care before cause they didn't know there was something to be gained, but now they know...and it's OIL. The Kony 2012 campaign is taking a military lean. Obama has deployed troops there to fight and capture Kony. Wanna bet they'll be drillin for oil in the near future?

Hell what about the struggle in Burma? people being raped & villages being burned down everyday without warning? , the women of Haiti who are raped & treated like unequal to men & forced into prostitution? the civil unrest in the congo?, i could go on & on. Basically i do love America, but my gosh is it flawed. Americans don't seem to give 2 fucks or a shit unless there is a youtube video on documentary they can watch safely home & then decide omg that's so wrong!! let's tweet about it0_0

This shit has been going on for years, and people need to quit acting like they really want to do shit. As Spinlight said people in American can't even care enough to help the bullshit going on under our noses here eh?

Not to mention people will just donate to a charity like this, without actually looking up what it is all about. SMDH

Hell what about the struggle in Burma? people being raped & villages being burned down everyday without warning? , the women of Haiti who are raped & treated like unequal to men & forced into prostitution? the civil unrest in the congo?, i could go on & on. Basically i do love America, but my gosh is it flawed. Americans don't seem to give 2 fucks or a shit unless there is a youtube video on documentary they can watch safely home & then decide omg that's so wrong!! let's tweet about it0_0

This shit has been going on for years, and people need to quit acting like they really want to do shit. As Spinlight said people in American can't even care enough to help the bullshit going on under our noses here eh?

Not to mention people will just donate to a charity like this, without actually looking up what it is all about. SMDH

Though I get your sentiment. I think the point of the video is that someone did get more involved than just sending money to some charity. Don't get mad, get your own out there. The news today, highlighted that this video got more hits on youtube faster than any other celebrity youtube vid. Maybe people are paying attention more than we sometimes give them credit for, idk. I guess the point is, if only thousands out of the millions that see this get motivated by it to push harder, a whole hell of a lot can get accomplished.

This insanity has been going on for years. Our government could have easily taken this dude out but no.......we put our resources on killing Osama and Quadaffi/Kadaffi etc and for what? Seems to me this dude is far worse and more of a threat to mankind since he ruins generations not just nations.

I'M NOT SAYING YOU'RE UGLY. YOU JUST HAVE BAD LUCK WHEN IT COMES TO MIRRORS AND SUNLIGHT!RIP Dick Clark, Whitney Houston, Don Cornelius, Heavy D, and Donna Summer.

There it is! As long as Africans are killing Africans then the governement/our government wont' do shit. Nevermind that these are babies being raped, tortured, forced to kill and slaughtered. I guess Uganda doesn't have enough oil for us to get involved.

And fuck, isn't Obama's daddy from Uganda? Doesn't this touch him on some personal level?

I'M NOT SAYING YOU'RE UGLY. YOU JUST HAVE BAD LUCK WHEN IT COMES TO MIRRORS AND SUNLIGHT!RIP Dick Clark, Whitney Houston, Don Cornelius, Heavy D, and Donna Summer.

What was going on in Uganda was terrible. But honestly, this Invisible Children organization gave you a lot of fluff in their video with minimal facts. So here are the facts:

1. Joseph Kony is not in Uganda. He hasn't been there since 2006.

2. His army of children numbers in the hundreds (if that much) not the thousands. The number 30,000 comes from the number of children he has "drafted" into his army in all the years of the LRA's existence (meaning 26 years, if I'm not mistaken).

3. The video footage was shot in 2003, and what was happening then is not happening now.

4. The LRA is in peace talks with Uganda, with no foreign assistance.

5. The Ugandan army, who America sent foreign advisors to, is incredibly corrupted. They have consistently been accussed of rape and pillaging.

6. The Invisible Children organization made $9mil in 2009 alone. Of that money, 47% went to raising awareness, making videos, and travel expenses, 37% went to actual programs in Central Africa, and the remainder was used for general expenses.

I'm a little confused as to why IC is convinced that finding Joseph Kony in a year will be possible with American assistance. It took longer than a year to find Osama bin Laden and longer than a year to find Sadaam Hussein.

I also wonder why they call for the USA to get involved. I don't really take issue with the fact that the USA has little to gain from this endeavor, but more with the fact that America as a whole is convinced that they are the all-powerful police of the world, and every country is just waiting for America to get involved in their agenda so everything can be fixed. Most people in America don't even know where Uganda is.

I digress after the following point: It's easy to throw money at a problem and hope it goes away, or throw money at a problem so you can call yourself a social activist. "Action" is not posting this video on your Facebook wall or Tumblr or retweeting it on Twitter. Action isn't wearing a T-shirt and some bracelets that make Joseph Kony look like the newest GOP candidate for president. And action is not giving your money to an organization that spends the majority of their donations on raising awareness.

If you choose to do something, then do something. This whole KONY 2012 campaign just seems like a way for people to get their quick fix of humanitarianism before they go right back to buying iPads and shopping at Walmart.

There it is! As long as Africans are killing Africans then the governement/our government wont' do shit. Nevermind that these are babies being raped, tortured, forced to kill and slaughtered. I guess Uganda doesn't have enough oil for us to get involved.

And fuck, isn't Obama's daddy from Uganda? Doesn't this touch him on some personal level?

There it is! As long as Africans are killing Africans then the governement/our government wont' do shit. Nevermind that these are babies being raped, tortured, forced to kill and slaughtered. I guess Uganda doesn't have enough oil for us to get involved.

And fuck, isn't Obama's daddy from Uganda? Doesn't this touch him on some personal level?

Kenya

aah. thank you.

I'M NOT SAYING YOU'RE UGLY. YOU JUST HAVE BAD LUCK WHEN IT COMES TO MIRRORS AND SUNLIGHT!RIP Dick Clark, Whitney Houston, Don Cornelius, Heavy D, and Donna Summer.

What was going on in Uganda was terrible. But honestly, this Invisible Children organization gave you a lot of fluff in their video with minimal facts. So here are the facts:

1. Joseph Kony is not in Uganda. He hasn't been there since 2006.

2. His army of children numbers in the hundreds (if that much) not the thousands. The number 30,000 comes from the number of children he has "drafted" into his army in all the years of the LRA's existence (meaning 26 years, if I'm not mistaken).

3. The video footage was shot in 2003, and what was happening then is not happening now.

4. The LRA is in peace talks with Uganda, with no foreign assistance.

5. The Ugandan army, who America sent foreign advisors to, is incredibly corrupted. They have consistently been accussed of rape and pillaging.

6. The Invisible Children organization made $9mil in 2009 alone. Of that money, 47% went to raising awareness, making videos, and travel expenses, 37% went to actual programs in Central Africa, and the remainder was used for general expenses.

I'm a little confused as to why IC is convinced that finding Joseph Kony in a year will be possible with American assistance. It took longer than a year to find Osama bin Laden and longer than a year to find Sadaam Hussein.

I also wonder why they call for the USA to get involved. I don't really take issue with the fact that the USA has little to gain from this endeavor, but more with the fact that America as a whole is convinced that they are the all-powerful police of the world, and every country is just waiting for America to get involved in their agenda so everything can be fixed. Most people in America don't even know where Uganda is.

I digress after the following point: It's easy to throw money at a problem and hope it goes away, or throw money at a problem so you can call yourself a social activist. "Action" is not posting this video on your Facebook wall or Tumblr or retweeting it on Twitter. Action isn't wearing a T-shirt and some bracelets that make Joseph Kony look like the newest GOP candidate for president. And action is not giving your money to an organization that spends the majority of their donations on raising awareness.

If you choose to do something, then do something. This whole KONY 2012 campaign just seems like a way for people to get their quick fix of humanitarianism before they go right back to buying iPads and shopping at Walmart.

What was going on in Uganda was terrible. But honestly, this Invisible Children organization gave you a lot of fluff in their video with minimal facts. So here are the facts:

1. Joseph Kony is not in Uganda. He hasn't been there since 2006.

2. His army of children numbers in the hundreds (if that much) not the thousands. The number 30,000 comes from the number of children he has "drafted" into his army in all the years of the LRA's existence (meaning 26 years, if I'm not mistaken).

3. The video footage was shot in 2003, and what was happening then is not happening now.

4. The LRA is in peace talks with Uganda, with no foreign assistance.

5. The Ugandan army, who America sent foreign advisors to, is incredibly corrupted. They have consistently been accussed of rape and pillaging.

6. The Invisible Children organization made $9mil in 2009 alone. Of that money, 47% went to raising awareness, making videos, and travel expenses, 37% went to actual programs in Central Africa, and the remainder was used for general expenses.

I'm a little confused as to why IC is convinced that finding Joseph Kony in a year will be possible with American assistance. It took longer than a year to find Osama bin Laden and longer than a year to find Sadaam Hussein.

I also wonder why they call for the USA to get involved. I don't really take issue with the fact that the USA has little to gain from this endeavor, but more with the fact that America as a whole is convinced that they are the all-powerful police of the world, and every country is just waiting for America to get involved in their agenda so everything can be fixed. Most people in America don't even know where Uganda is.

I digress after the following point: It's easy to throw money at a problem and hope it goes away, or throw money at a problem so you can call yourself a social activist. "Action" is not posting this video on your Facebook wall or Tumblr or retweeting it on Twitter. Action isn't wearing a T-shirt and some bracelets that make Joseph Kony look like the newest GOP candidate for president. And action is not giving your money to an organization that spends the majority of their donations on raising awareness.

If you choose to do something, then do something. This whole KONY 2012 campaign just seems like a way for people to get their quick fix of humanitarianism before they go right back to buying iPads and shopping at Walmart.

in alot of ways it can be a ploy to get obama involved

so the tea party can have that as a point against him.

now as far as whut has gone on in uganda

so whut if it was 6 years ago, folks are still

carryin the torch (rightly so) about the holocost.

but when it comes to the black population of

the planet everybody wants to be passive

for such "good" reasons.

raisin awareness is whut it is.

a lot of whites joined with the panthers back in the day

they just wanted to feel they made a point and they did.

they got beat like we did and went home.

in the marches for equality, whites marched with blacks.

they wanted to show solidarity, feel like they made a point.

they got beat like we did, then took they ass home.

no matter the senario, they stayed white, and only took

the ass kickin as long as they felt like it.

SO WHUTZ NEW???

the point is they are makin noise. and by makin noise

at least two things will happen. 1. those who backed kony

will have to make new plans to keep doin whut they do

(e.g. the governments who make money from his supply

of untaxed diamonds and oil, AND his lil hit squads)

2. where as whites were not targets before, they will be now

and when that happens, shit will hit the fan A LOT QWIKKER

(for those anals quicker)

now this is all just MY OPPINION

so sayin i'm wrong is a waist of time.

but havin an OPEN MIND will help in seein

the truth of whut i say, this ain't no new fight.

Oh!!! and that lil girl was commical and her parents

prolly benifited from the works of kony

it's the sellout of the slaves all over again

which is whut the people of that contenent

are best known for

KALI my child will wreak havoc on all you love at my command... i am KING BAD!!!